Symmetry-Enabled New Microlasers

Explorations of symmetry and topology on a photonic platform not only deepen our understanding of fundamental physics, but also enable novel material properties to facilitate technological breakthroughs for photonic applications. By harnessing new symmetries, we demonstrated orbital angular momentum (OAM) microlasers that structure and twist directly the lasing radiation at the microscale, which can provide an additional OAM-based information dimension by taking advantage of the spatial degree of freedom (DOF) of light. Furthermore, we conducted a supersymmetry-based formalism to achieve higher-dimensional microlaser phaser arrays producing high-radiance, small-divergence laser beams with orders of magnitude enhancement in energy density.